Chapter 30
CHAPTER THIRTY
MIKO
We gathered in the stuffy basement, cobwebs thick in every corner.
Malorie sat at the center of our circle on a picnic blanket, handing out plastic cups filled with murky brown liquid to me and Trev, keeping one for herself.
“Drink the entire thing on my cue,” she said. “Then join hands quickly. The effects will kick in almost immediately. Orion and Paige? Don’t let go at any point. Keep them anchored. You are their links to reality. Letting go will give me a headache I don’t want today.”
Ori and Paige agreed wholeheartedly, sat side by side and on either side of me and the troll.
“Okay. In ten seconds, drink…” she counted down, ending with, “now.”
The three of us drank at the same time. Ori’s hand connected with my left hand, Trev’s with my right.
Aniseed oozed down my throat, laced with a nasty, unexpected bitterness.
Disgusting.
“Any moment now,” Malorie said, her voice dreamlike and echoey.
The basement flickered like bad a TV signal, a crackle like white noise rolling through my ears.
My trust in Malorie waivered. What if she was working with Lance? What if this was a knockout drug and he’d come stomping down the stairs to claim his prize at any moment?
Too late now, the shitty gunk was working through my system like cold, liquid jelly.
The basement vanished, wiped out of view by a line of darkness. New images came, sunny and warm, birdsong around us—minus Ori, Paige, and Malorie.
We got to our feet as a meadow opened up around us.
“The fuck?” Trev said.
A summer’s day—blue skies, full sun, flowers in bloom, big boulders scattered around the vast green space.
Wait. More than boulders. Houses. Big stone houses fit for a troll, curtains billowing in oval-shaped windows.
“I know this place,” Trev said. “This is…” He took a step forward.
Troll kids, both green and violet-skinned, manifested into the scene, playing in the grass, a park taking shape over to my left.
Adult trolls laughed and chatted, hung their washing out, played chess at stone tables close to the park, bought things from market stalls, and read books on benches, one telling off a little boy for stealing another boy’s ice cream.
A whole village bloomed to life around us.
Whoa.
“Plumsea village. My hometown,” Trev said. “I’d…I’d forgotten all about it.”
Before the oracle revelation, Trev only ever said he was from the southwest of England. Trolls were native to both Earth and Faery, so I never really paid much attention to it.
Now I did. Now the info stood out like a sore thumb—as my sister Carmelita used to say.
Plum trees took root, painting themselves to life.
“It’s on an island off the southwest coast of Faery.” Trev turned on the spot, taking it all in.
“Not Earth, then,” I responded.
He looked at me, his pointy ears pricking.
“Fuck. I could see that fake hometown on Earth, not this place. But this is…” He rubbed at his temples.
“I lived here until the age of eighteen, heading out to find work. Dad told me to try Earth, get out there and experience human culture. It’d be good for me. I… I don’t…”
Malorie appeared before us, woven together by some metaphysical knitter. “This is wonderful progress already. Much easier than I expected.”
Judging by Trev’s tense body language, he didn’t agree. “Why would I forget my hometown?”
Malorie pointed to a rock building with a green-and-purple flag fluttering on a flagpole.
“Sha… Sha… Shaman Roseanne?” Trev said rubbing his eyes. “I remember her. She made healing potions, had all sorts of things to make us better. And sometimes she could see snippets of the future. I don’t remember what happened to her.”
Malorie nodded. “Everything you need to know lies within that house.”
“It’s that easy?” I asked, a bunny hopping past my feet, a little girl troll chasing after it.
“Brewing the concoction was not easy, Miko.”
“Sorry.”
“This takes a degree of openness from the drinkers, too,” she added. “But it appears you are both ready for answers.”
I rolled my shoulders. “I’m looking for the consequence. There’s always a consequence.”
She bent to pick a daisy, the flower returning to the spot seconds later.
“What the hell happened?”
“Nothing,” she said. “You do not affect these surroundings. There will only be consequences if you lose your anchors. And I’m sure the fae and the wolf aren’t about to do that.”
Pride unfurled inside me for Ori and Paige. “That’s right.”
“Keep your focus on getting answers, and let’s follow Trev into that house.”
The troll had already slipped inside.
We joined him in a house with minimal décor. Bare rocky walls and floor, a mattress in the middle of the living room, and a smoking cauldron hovering in the air beside a violet troll sitting in an orange armchair.
Trev stood by a window, watching the woman with the amazing white mohawk in white robes talk to a teenage Trev kneeling on the mattress, his form appearing from thin air.
God, he’d been massive then, only slightly smaller than his current muscle-packed shape.
I joined adult Trev. “You good?”
“Dunno, mate.”
We were ghosts, nothing more than that.
The shaman troll’s fingers steepled as she regarded the young man.
“I don’t understand,” Young Trev said. “Why would I have that sort of gift?”
Shaman Roseanne’s cauldron moved and tipped water over the mattress. The clear liquid transformed into a familiar blue shade. It moved, as if being drawn with invisible fingers until it made the shape of an eye with an X in the middle of it.
The mark of the oracle.
“You were chosen to be the oracle,” the shaman said. “A contender in a universal lottery you never asked to a be part of.”
“I was?”
“But you can change things, Trev. You can throw your name back in, go back to your life, let someone else dabble in the fate of our worlds.”
Young Trev shuffled across the mattress closer to his shaman. “What do you mean worlds? What’s going on?”
Roseanne clicked a finger, a tobacco pipe appearing in her hand. She took a puff without lighting it, blowing out green smoke rings. “Ah. Bliss. Want some?”
Trev shook his head.
The three of us watched on, Trev as still as the stone of this house.
“Big things are coming over the next few years. Earth will be hit with a curse, humanity wiped out because of the actions of a fool.”
Icy fingers stroked my spine.
Did she mean my dad?
“Fools, I should say. Everything will be bad, Trev. Pretty hopeless. And it won’t end with Earth. Eventually, the shite will spread, the evolution of the curse coming to knock on Faery’s doors.” She took another puff. “It starts with zombies. It ends in a bloodbath.”
Evolution.
The speedies.
What. The. Fuck.
“Zombies?” Trev said. “What—”
“Piece by piece, the undead will evolve until they unlock their true power—a power the selfish fools and those who manipulated them never envisioned.”
My brain throbbed, struggling to compute. Things were only getting started with the zombies? First, they start this talking and human behavior stuff, and then what? How could they possibly get any worse?
“Mate…” Adult Trev whispered to me. “The fuck?”
“I don’t see the face of this true power,” Roseanne said. “I only feel its appetite for destruction. And it will destroy everything, tear through Earth and Faery, leaving nothing but blood and dirt and bones.”
Young Trev swallowed. “What can I do to help?”
Roseanne smiled. “Because the universe, as it likes to do, offers up a solution, this is where you come in. If you want to help.”
“I do.”
“Remember, the lottery can be drawn again. Well, one more time. Then that’s your lot. No winners, only losers.”
“I’ll help. I’ll help.”
“Good boy.” She blew a smoke ring at the ceiling. “Now, this is how it will work. You’ll forget all about me after this, including this village. You’ll be given a new life on Earth as the oracle. But it won’t come easily, depending on the will of others to find you.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why does it sound complicated?”
She shrugged. “The universe is an asshole. I get to peek behind the curtain, but don’t get to know why things are how they are.
I guess that’s the price for cheating, or for being the orchestrator of this hope.
Also, there are always opposing forces vying to see their destinies flourish.
Got to bring the fight to them and all that jazz.
” Roseanne puffed on her pipe. “But this convoluted path is because of the actions of dickhead humans. We’re lucky to be given any hope.
We’re all just pawns who need to prove our worth.
But powerful pawns. Are you sure you don’t want a puff on this? It’ll take the edge off.”
Young Trev shook his head.
“Suit yourself. Anyway, I’ll bestow you with the powers of the oracle here today.
You’ll go into your new life, leaving behind your clues—this mark, a cryptic message in a dying human.
Then it’ll be up to the son of the selfish fools to find you and get the answers he needs.
Answers I don’t have, I’m afraid. Only that this man will be the key.
Possibly one of two keys. That’s all on the fuzzy side.
I have no clue how the fools’ son will find you, only that this mark is yours and a conduit for your meeting. ”
She was definitely talking about me and about my parents. Were both Mum and Dad responsible for Dawn? And what was this possible second key?
Shit, I was numb, unable to even twitch a finger from the shock.
Young Trev pinched the bridge of his nose. “This is wild.”
“I know.”
“What if I’m killed?”
“I don’t know.” She puffed on her pipe. “Everything goes tits up, I suppose. After I give you the powers, the rest is up to you.”
“And I’ll forget you and Plumsea?”
“Yep. That much I do know. I’m really sorry.”
Young Trev straightened his spine. “This hurts my brain, but whatever it takes. I won’t let the worlds die. My brother and parents deserve a good life.”
“So do many, many others.”
“Well, I’m doing this for them.”